Cyber Wellness (Monday, July 12, 2010 / 6:48 AM)
Cyber wellness and awareness are critically important for people especially the young ages. Young people surfs the net for all purposes like doing research, chatting with friends or even gaming. Without cyber wellness, young people may not have the right concept on how dangerous the internet could be.
For example gaming, there have been a couple case of teenagers being too engrossed in the computer games and can't differentiate the virtual world and real life. Some may take relationship in virtual world seriously and get themselves into trouble. To some extreme extend, there are cases where teenagers became bad-tempered and turns into a violent person. This are influenced by certain computer games which the purpose of the games was to kill monsters and defeat enemies with violent. Many teenagers are addicted to computers and do not bother about their social life and studies.
Cyber wellness also includes the awareness of cyber bully. Teenagers nowadays have their own personal blog to record their thoughts and feelings down. However, exposing one's personal feelings and live to the public may not be appropriate too. As anyone can read it, there is a chance for people to comment on what was on the blog. This may results in a type of cyber bully called "spamming". Those cyber bullies targets at victim that they dislike and will tag on their tag box with vulgarities and insulting words.
Social websites like facebook and twitter are very popular among young people these days. However, this may also be a trap for teenagers. People may met new friends from these websites and decides to meet out. Lacking of sufficient cyber awareness will leads these teenagers to risky situations. The friends whom they got to know from the net may not be who they claimed to be. So, if one insist to meet new friends, it is always better to bring along one or two more friends.
In conclusion, without proper cyber wellness training and knowledge, it is very risky and unsecure to over-engross in online activities.
